Andrew Shadwell, wherever he had taken refuge, must indeed have chided himself bitterly for fleeing to the English just when success seemed to have returned to the side of the Colonies. Victory was with the American arms all through the Spring, for the troops that had braved the horrors of the Valley Forge winter, found thereafter that the dangers of battle were small by comparison. So, at least, did Miles Atherton explain the turn of fortune in the American favour. He had been sent by General Washington on some errand to Boston and had ridden down to Hopewell for a hasty visit to his family and to Stephen and Clotilde. It was a bright, sweet, warm June day that they sat together in the garden, when all the gayest birds were singing and all the softest breezes blowing—a day to which Clotilde long looked back with wistful memory. Stephen had been ill and seemed now quite well again: that was one reason why she was so happy. His malady was one which he himself pronounced of no importance but over which the Doctor looked grave. “These flutterings of the heart,” jested Stephen, “are less worthy of an old man than of a young maid. Were they Clotilde’s—” “It is no matter for joking,” his old friend interrupted sternly. “Flutterings of the heart must be attended to or they will have grave effect.” “You cannot frighten an old man whose span is almost completed,” returned Stephen. “Besides I will live to see the end of this long struggle; to do that I am determined.” So the Doctor had gone out muttering anxiously to himself, but Stephen had managed to quiet Clotilde’s fears and to make her smile again. Two other pleasant things had also happened on that same morning, previous to Miles’ coming. One was Gerald Radpath’s walking unaided for the first time. He had come out into the garden and had limped as far as the bench by the sundial, with such success that Clotilde had felt that they could believe at last that his recovery was not so hopelessly far away. Weak and pale as he still was, he seemed, for the first time as he sat there in the sunshine, to be somewhat more than the mere ghost of that sturdy soldier who had carried her across the snowy meadow. Another joy, one even more unexpected, was that the linden tree, after standing black and bare for two Springs, this year put forth leaves and, on that very day, had come once more into bloom. Many times the question had been raised as to whether it ought not to be cut down, but each time Stephen had refused, saying that trees so injured had been known to stand seven years dead and then put forth life again. Now his patience had been rewarded, the happy bees hummed in the branches, the grass was green in the little Queen’s garden and the hedges were growing tall again. “It is surely a pleasant world,” said Gerald, as he drank in long breaths of the fresh warm air and looked out at the dancing blue waters of the harbour.